New Anti-Mine Technologies For The Deep Blue Sea
April 6, 2015 3:12 PM   Subscribe

From Sailors To Robots: A Revolution In Clearing Mines How primitive can “modern” mine warfare get? At least as recently as the 1990s, US sailors hunting mines spent a lot of time shooting dead sheep. posted by Michele in California (11 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow. Until I RTFA'd I thought "dead sheep" was a joke or a metaphor or something.

Interesting article.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:57 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


One interesting approach to clearing a mine field is to take a super-tanker (which is no longer needed) and fill all the tanks entirely with styrofoam. (So that each tank is one big piece.) Then a very small crew sails it right through the mine field, hoping to get hit as often as possible.

Hits which hole the hull still won't sink it; such a ship can survive enormous damage and keep sailing.

It's effective but it isn't very cheap.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:10 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


 000 😎 008
▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢
▢▢▢▢▢ 1 1 1
1 1 ▢▢▢ 2 ⚑ 2
⚑ 1 ▢▢▢ 3 ⚑ 4
2 2 1 ▢▢ 2 ⚑ ⚑
1 ⚑ 1 ▢▢ 1 4 ⚑
2 2 1 ▢▢▢ 3 ⚑
⚑ 1 ▢▢▢▢ 2 ⚑
posted by 7segment at 4:10 PM on April 6, 2015 [28 favorites]


Could I have a translation, please?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:34 PM on April 6, 2015


I conferred with a select group of experts. The general consensus is that it is a reference to the game minesweeper.
posted by Michele in California at 5:55 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Isn't is open whether or not minesweeper is solvable in polynomial time? Maybe robots are a bad idea.
posted by busted_crayons at 6:10 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


That pic messed up on that 3 in the lower right corner. It should be a 2.

...and I've played waaaay too much Minesweeper back in the day.
posted by happyroach at 8:55 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


I smell a wumpus.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:15 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Has anyone ever actually sailed a supertanker full of styrofoam through a minefield? I would so like this to be a true thing of actual happening, providing only that the stupendously nasty environmental implications weren't true things that actually happened.

So many questions. So many.
posted by Devonian at 6:18 AM on April 7, 2015


Wow, US Navy still has wooden hulled ships in service! Cool.
posted by hat_eater at 6:40 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


There is some pretty interesting stuff in that article, and the whole three part series is a good read on the importance of counter mine warfare in the world as it pertains to freedom of the seas. The most fascinating point seems to be that the more things change the more they stay the same, and it makes me wonder a little about the commitment to this mission set.

From the posted article: "The Navy even repurposed a decommissioned amphibious ship, the USS Ponce, as what’s called an Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB), primarily to support counter-mine operations. Two more purpose-built AFSBs will follow, and “the primary mission of the Afloat Forward Staging Base [is] aviation mine countermeasures,” said Capt. Henry Stevens of Naval Sea Systems Command at January’s Surface Navy Association conference. While the AFSB can potentially accommodate a multitude of missions, from special operations to V-22 Ospreys, its design is driven first and foremost by the needs of the massive MH-53E helicopter used for aerial mine-clearing." [emphasis mine]

When it comes to the two bolded points above, that is where the questions start to percolate up. Between 1994-1996, the US Navy converted the USS Inchon, then LPH12 to MCS12, a Mine Countermeasures Support command ship, after events before and during the first Gulf War identified the need for a dedicated command, control and support ship to support mine countermeasures operations. And how did that end up? "Decommissioned on June 20, 2002, and stricken from the Navy list on May 24, 2004, the INCHON sunk as a target on December 5, 2004, 207 nautical miles northeast of Virginia Beach, Va". Less that 10 years after re-commissioning, she was purposefully installed at the bottom of the Atlantic. (More about the Inchon can be found at navysite.de and nvr.navy.mil.) For comparison, images of the Inchon and the new, improved USS Ponce.

The second question might even be a bigger one. That massive MH-53 helicopter is indeed a highly capable platform, and arguably worthy of a purpose built support ship to quickly deploy them wherever they are needed. But in recent years the aircraft has been struggling. Recent articles have pointed out many operational safety concerns with the aircraft after the most recent crash in Jan 2014 killed three crew members. From a Navy Times article, "In the five years prior to the Jan. 8 crash, the Sea Dragon accounted for three of the Navy's 10 crashes that included loss of life or more than $2 million in damage." That crash was also the subject of a recent expose on NBC News (autoplay video ads) primarily focused on the spouse of one of the pilots who alleges inappropriate cultural maintenance practices contributed to the crash. These events have resulted in some flight restrictions to the helicopter, covered here in Jane's.

According to the Navy, the MH-53 is supposed to continue in service for at least 10 more years. Is it reasonable to expect these aging helicopters to last that long, or to purpose build a support ship for a airframe planned on being phased out, especially considering the last such purpose built ship didn't last 10 years itself? One hopes that a renewed commitment to the area of counter mine warfare would be more long term and sustained in order to keep the seas free and act as a deterrent to would-be minelayers. There certainly exists an option to replace the MH-53, since Sikorsky has already engineered and developed replacement for the similar CH-53 for the US Marine Corps, the CH-53K, which would fit right in with the shiny new USS Ponce.
posted by HycoSpeed at 9:35 AM on April 8, 2015


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